


The Mysteries and Secrets of Hilda Goneril

by jayballing



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: A bit of a Hilda character study I guess, Any route would work but my favorite is CF so we will go with that one, Except about herself, F/M, Gen, Hilda knows everything about everyone, I love Claude and Hilda, In this house we STAN Dorothea Arnault, In this house we deal with Hilda's internalized prejudice, Minor Ferdinand von Aegir/Dorothea Arnault, Minor Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier, My First Work in This Fandom, Pre-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23759959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayballing/pseuds/jayballing
Summary: "As they went on opposite ways, Dorothea mused that – no matter how spectacular Hilda was at picking up behavioral clues of others, she surely wasn’t good at picking up those behavioral clues when the subject was herself."
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault & Hilda Valentine Goneril, Ferdinand von Aegir & Hilda Valentine Goneril, Ferdinand von Aegir/Dorothea Arnault, Hilda Valentine Goneril & Claude von Riegan, Hilda Valentine Goneril/Claude von Riegan, Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Sylvain Jose Gautier & Hilda Valentine Goneril
Comments: 7
Kudos: 51





	The Mysteries and Secrets of Hilda Goneril

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone!
> 
> Full disclosure: this is my first fic that I decided to publish. I have some plot bunnies that I play with in my head and have written some drabbles as personal exercises, but this is by far the most complex fanfic I've ever written.
> 
> Constructive criticism is appreciated! I apologize in advance if some of my personal interpretations of the characters are not in-character. Particularly, I wasn't super sure about Lorenz, but that's how I saw him pre-TS.
> 
> I LOVE FE3H. I have played it so many times it's absurd. ClaudexHilda are possibly my favorite ship in the game, followed by all the other ships mentioned in here one way or the other.
> 
> There is a short scene with Byleth in it. I left up in the air which Byleth it is on purpose. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

Garreg Mach Monastery had many secrets. Of course, that means most of these secrets were known to the students one way or the other, be it as a myth or as a rumor.

The secrets were both about the building itself as well as the people that resided there. For Hilda Goneril, the latter were the actually interesting ones.

She was lazy and well aware of that, but being lazy about fighting and being lazy about information gathering were different things, at least as far as she was concerned. Yes, she would charm her way out of laundry responsibilities for the week, batting her eyes at Sylvain or putting on the act of damsel-in-distress for Ferdinand. Those moments, however, were when the information gathering would start.

She would bat her eyes at Sylvain and compliment him on his chivalry and he would indulge her whims, but when he believed that no one was looking, his body language would shift completely if Ingrid were around. His eyes softened and his arrogant smirk would become a warm smile. Hilda doesn’t know if anybody else notices it, but that is the real Sylvain. Not the one that flirts with anything that moves but the one that looks at Ingrid like she is the most precious person alive.

For him, Hilda thinks, that might very well be the case.

Ferdinand was different. He didn’t indulge Hilda simply because she was attractive and would compliment him (the complimenting did help, though). He simply had a warped notion of what it means to be a noble, and that includes helping delicate-flower Hilda when she is in need.

She wouldn’t flirt with him, as it would fall flat. While Sylvain made a very conscious effort to be discreet in his clear-as-daylight (for Hilda, at least) love for Ingrid, Ferdinand’s “flirting” would only fall short of wearing a sign above his head that would say “I want Dorothea Arnault to have my children.”

Many thought it was pathetic. Dorothea was incredibly sweet and smart – and ridiculously attractive, as anyone with eyes in the Academy would say. However, she would not give poor Ferdinand the time of day. Or so everyone thought.

Hilda knew better. She knew that Dorothea would tell anyone that would listen that "Ferdie" was annoying, but Hilda also knew that she blushed and smiled when Ferdinand left a basket of baked goods by her door. Hilda noticed that Dorothea was slowly but surely sitting closer and closer to Ferdinand during meals. Hilda also noticed that, while Dorothea used to say the all nobles were disgusting, she lately changed her speech to most nobles, meaning that some nobles out there were changing her perception.

Hilda would like to take a bit of credit for that. She and Ingrid were good friends with Dorothea and Dorothea clearly liked them, both nobles from the day they were born. However, Hilda’s information gathering also lead her to know that Dorothea’s statements were about her suitors. Hilda had to agree they were mostly disgusting.

These were some of the secrets she knew outside of her own house. Within the Golden Deer, she knew that Lysithea was dangerously ill. She does not know what she has or if there is a cure to it, but she knows that she has found forgotten notes on the library about having multiple crests and experimentation leading to a shortened life spam, with Lysithea’s name circled multiple times. She recognizes the handwriting as Linhardt’s. She also noticed the word cure underlined multiple times with question marks next to it.

She found the note at night, when she was turning books to the library and there wasn’t anybody around for her to delegate her chores to them. She decided that nobody else needed to know this, so she burned the note and wrote another note that said _thank you for your research_ and swept it under Linhardt’s door when she returned to the dormitory. She was, after all, very good at complimenting people. She obviously didn’t sign that note.

She knew that Lorenz, for all his moronic talks about leadership and nobility, as well as pompous attitude that showed how he thought of himself as better than everyone else, was lonely. He was struggling with the fact that charismatic Claude von Riegan might not be, on paper, the best option to lead the Alliance. Still, people certainly liked Claude more than Lorenz. Or at least that was Lorenz’s perception. Hilda knew better than to think Claude felt (or indeed was) liked by his people.

That made her think of the biggest mystery, the biggest secret of them all. Claude von Riegan himself.

\-----------------------------------------

Hilda and Claude arrived at the Officers Academy at the same time. She was getting out of the chariot that her brother Holst had arranged for her when this Wyvern landed right next to her. Dismounting the Wyvern was one of the most handsome man Hilda had ever seen. She only had a couple of seconds to register that since the Wyvern’s wings made a whole lot of dust fly into her face and jaw-dropped mouth.

“Easy, girl!” the man told the Wyvern while patting it, and Hilda could see from the side that he had an easy smile on his face. He turned to Hilda and her little army that Holst had insisted to come with her. “Sorry about that,” he took a bandanna out of his pocket and handed it to her. “This is not incredibly helpful, but I hope it isn’t completely useless. I wasn’t expecting to land here just as somebody was arriving.”

He looked concerned and Hilda realized she was probably making a disgusted face, which he might have misconstrued as disgusted at him instead of at the dust and dirt that had landed on her face and clothes.

They had started walking towards the gates at this point, separating themselves from the group.

“I can forget all about this little incident, all I’d want in return is to know the name of the person that just covered me in dust.”

“Technically, I didn’t cover you in dirt, that was all the Wyvern.” He now had a smirk on his face. “But if you must know, my name is Claude. At your service, miss…?” He bowed very dramatically and extended his hand to her, while lifting his head to look at her face when implicitly asking for her name. Hilda was trying her best to not laugh at this bizarre – albeit gorgeous – individual.

“Hilda. Hilda Goneril.”

\------------------------------------------

Soon, they became inseparable.

The curious things about friendships is that humans tend to cling to people that are familiar to them in environments where they don’t know anybody. Arriving together at Garreg Mach provided Hilda and Claude with their most familiar individual on the spot, for better or worse.

Even being close friends, Claude was an infinite mystery. Hilda would see mountains of books about politics whenever they hung out in his room, plotting their next scheme. She noticed that he would flinch, just barely, when she mentioned anything about Holst’s missions at Fodlan’s Throat against Almyrans. His reaction to mentions of Almyrans in general made his body language change slightly every time (not that people would notice), but it was more pronounced when Hilda brought it up when they were alone. She needed more observations to know if that was because he was more relaxed around her or because it was her specifically that brought them up.

She knew, at this point, that he had some sort of relationship with Almyra. His complexion might indicate that he had some sort of family there. She wished he trusted her enough to share.

She understood why he would not do such thing. Before Hilda started noticing these signs, she would very nonchalantly mention the Almyrans her brother slaughtered past month, or how her family has always told her to not trust Almyrans. How could she expect her (probable) Almyran best friend to share with her?

His origins were not his biggest mystery, however. Well, it may be to others who question, in general, how Claude came to be the heir of House Riegan as nobody had heard of him until a year ago. These people were probably very interested in knowing their future leader had Almyran origins, and that would probably be enough for several of them to be wary of him even more. However, they might stop questioning it by that point. After all, the people of Fodlan were taught to be cautious around people from Almyra. Hilda was taught to be like that. And Claude knew all of this.

And this was the biggest secret, the biggest mystery: why Claude enjoyed spending time with her? She, whose brother slaughtered his people constantly. She, that slipped every now and then and still made insensitive comments, even knowing her dear friend was probably hurt by it.

This mystery intensified as they spent more and more time together. Little did Hilda knew that, when Claude said “at your service” when they first met, it would be her that would be his right-hand man. She, lazy and good-at-delegating-tasks Hilda, started using her information gathering powers for the sake of her most dear friend, possible-Almyran Claude. Weirdly enough, she enjoyed completing these tasks. She never cared much for praise, but praise and gratitude from Claude meant the world for her. Scheming with him after gossiping with him was honestly one of her favorite activities. She loved to see him sitting at the edge of his chair, barely containing his excitement, as he told her how he created a new potion, or how he played with his side-braid while she told him the happenings around the Monastery.

Hilda noticed the signs in Sylvain and in Dorothea, so of course she noticed the signs in herself. It takes a lot of self-awareness to be as good at delegating as she is.

But this only made the mysteries and secrets of Claude von Riegan more complicated, as they became becoming part of the mysteries and secrets of Hilda Goneril.

The mysteries of Hilda Goneril are: When did she started trying Almyran foods during their meals? When did she pick up books on the library about Almyran culture? When did she start making a conscious effort to destroy the prejudiced walls she built around the concept of Almyra? But most of all, how did she fall in love with a man from a country she was taught to hate her whole life?

The secret of Hilda Goneril is exactly that love. Her friendship with Claude is one of the most precious things in her life. She doesn’t even know why he is her friend with all the terrible things she has said. To ruin what they have for a confession of feelings that will go unreciprocated? She would never.

She does plan on telling him about that secret. She will do so when he trusts her to tell her that he is from Almyra. Not because she believes this to be some sort of game, but because she wants him to feel comfortable enough to tell her that, so she can say without a doubt for him and for her that she couldn’t care less and that she loves him. He makes her happy with their schemes, he impresses her with his intelligence, and unconsciously, he taught prejudice does nothing but build invisible walls.

She doesn’t know if he will ever tell her the truth about him, which means she doesn’t know if she will ever tell him how she feels. It doesn’t matter to her, as she doesn’t even know how he feels about her. All she knows is that her relationship with Claude changed her much more than she ever imagined when he clumsily landed his Wyvern next to her when they first met.

\----------------------------------------

Dorothea was taking a walk after lunch around the monastery, as she usually did to breath some fresh air after a good meal. Lately, she was letting Ferdie accompany her in some of these walks, but today he was participating in some lance tournament at the training grounds.

She turned in the direction of their classrooms and decided to sit under the shade of trees on one of the benches. From there, she saw Professor Byleth telling Hilda something. She could see that Hilda was using all her tricks to get out of whatever task the professor was trying to get her to do, but her efforts were clearly in vain.

"Poor Hilda, only Edie could use charm to change the mind of the professor, not that either of them are aware of that," whispered Dorothea. She kept thinking about Edelgard and her obvious crush on the professor, when she noticed something that way more interesting.

Claude was on the same side of the patio as her. The tree Dorothea was using as shade was hiding her, but she could clearly see him from where she was. What she noticed was Claude, with the softest smile, looking directly at the interaction between the professor and Hilda. Claude was leaning against the wall with his shoulder and his head, as if he was lazily admiring the most precious specimen. As the professor left a pout-y Hilda alone to do her task, she turned around and saw Claude. His soft and warm smile and his relaxed demeanor quickly became a smirk and he was standing tall, ready to make fun of her for being unable to get out of work.

They started walking in her direction and as they passed by her, talking animatedly, when Hilda noticed her.

“Oh hi, Dorothea! Beautiful day isn’t it?” Hilda’s mood improvement was clear as day.

Dorothea looked directly at Claude for a brief second and gave him an understanding smile. It was quick enough that she doesn’t think Hilda noticed (she can never tell with Hilda, though), but slow enough that she saw Claude blushing. That’s all the confirmation she needed.

“Indeed, Hilda, what a beautiful day. I was just getting ready to head to the training grounds, so I will talk to you more during dinner?”

“Sure! I have to tell you something _crazy_ about Felix!”

As they went on opposite ways, Dorothea mused that – no matter how spectacular Hilda was at picking up behavioral clues of others, she surely wasn’t good at picking up those behavioral clues when the subject was herself.


End file.
